Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Earlier today, I published a "Great Gaymathon" review of the game that's known to English-speaking audiences as Kid Icarus. (To Japanese-speaking audiences, it's known as Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami, or Light Myth: Palutena's Mirror.)

In that review, I mentioned that one of the main reasons I bought the GameBoy Advance version of this classic platformer is that I liked its packaging. Well, folded up within that packaging is the following, two-piece instruction manual, which is pretty attractive in its own right.

The front of the first page of said manual (as always, click on any of the images below to take a closer look at them) isn't the most exciting thing in the world, but I am quite fond of the illustrations--especially the one that shows what appears to be two of Angel Land's many gay couples--that accompany the story portion of the page.

The back side of the first page isn't much better, but it earns a few extra points for featuring a number of nice drawings of the game's protagonist, Pit, and the bosses he encounters during his journey. (My favorite is the rather portly Medusa, by the way.)

The second page of Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami's fold-out instruction manual is where it's at, if you ask me. True story: As a kid, I was obsessed with drawing many of the items and weapons showcased in the scan below, which is of the front of the manual's second page.

The front of the manual's second page has nothing on the back of it, though, which shines a light on pretty much every enemy that appears in the game. Which one is your favorite?

Personally, I've always been partial to that group along the right edge of the page--specifically, the Eggplant Wizard, Reaper, Shemum and Specknose.

Hey Bryan, I have a question for you. How are you scanning these? Like, I know some people who do magazine scans and they take out the staples then lay the pages flat on the scanner. Are you going all out like that or just opening the manuals up and flattening? I'm not sure how much sense my description makes but I hope you get what I'm asking :P.

Hello again, Marcus :) Oh, I understand what you're saying. I'm not being all that anal about these, honestly. I'm just laying the manuals flat on my scanner and then scanning them. After I'm done, I clean them up a bit in Photoshop and then post them.

Manuals like this one and the one included with Mother are a bit harder, as they're pretty large when unfolded. In the case of this one, I scanned it in sections and then did the best I could to stitch those sections together. It isn't perfect, but I think it's good enough for this purpose.

Thanks for the info! I've been wanting to take a crack at scanning some manuals myself, but that will probably not happen for a while. For one, I don't know how to use the new scanner! Secondly, like was talked about earlier in the comments... from PS2 generation onward it seems that manuals have become a whole lot less interesting (which is the majority of my collection).

Yeah, a lot of newer manuals just aren't as interesting as the old ones, Marcus. Nintendo and Square still do a pretty good job, IMO, but even then they don't usually have as much character as older ones. Anyway, I look forward to seeing scans of some of your manuals should you ever scan them!

About this blog

Yep, I'm gay. And I like video games. Old Japanese games and systems are my favorites--the Famicom, PC Engine, original PlayStation and GameBoy, especially--but I like plenty of newer ones, too. If you have similar interests and you don't mind perusing a blog that's got the word gay in its name and is practically slathered in pink, you'll probably enjoy your time here. I'm also on Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, by the way. Oh, and my Switch Friend Code = SW-5852-5514-6897.